Val ffrench Blake took command of the 17th/21st Lancers (17/21L) in Italy in September 1944. He had been in England recovering from his wounds and rejoined his regiment north of Florence, where it was facing the outposts of the Gothic Line.
Val ffrench Blake with two tiger cubs he adopted in India It was close country intersected by marshes, rivers and dykes. The Germans manned mountain observation posts from which mortar and artillery fire could be directed. They had well-sited infantry positions covering mined bridges and culverts, and the heights could be cleared only by infantry with mules and jeeps supported by sappers.
Operating armour in those conditions, ffrench Blake wrote afterwards, was like trying to open a tin can with a dagger: the point was blunted and the tin did not open properly.
In April 1945, in the final offensive in the Po Valley, ffrench Blake commanded an all-arms group comprising his own regiment, an infantry battalion, an artillery battery and a squadron of engineers. After a night approach march they crossed a river and, moving at full speed to the town of Póggio Renático, they closed the last escape route for the retreating German forces. ffrench Blake was awarded a DSO for his part in the campaign.
Energetic officer in the Parachute Regiment who saw service in a number of the world’s trouble spots
As a young officer Mike Gray’s ebullient energy, broad grin and dedication to the job made him popular with fellow officers and soldiers alike. Initially, due to his obvious keenness, they regarded him in a bemused way, but they quickly learnt that his close attention to their wellbeing, whatever their individual merits, was relentless.
This characteristic persisted throughout his service and received a broader focus after his retirement, in particular with regard to former members of the Parachute Regiment. His contemporaries would speak of him with a wry smile, recognising his ability as a general but wary of his restless vigour.
Michael Stuart Gray was born in the East Riding county town of Beverley, the eldest son of Lieutenant Frank Gray, RNVR, who was killed at sea in 1940. From his grammar school he won a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital, Horsham, Sussex, from where he went to RMA Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the East Yorkshire Regiment in 1952 and served for two years with the 1st Battalion in Malaya, during the communist insurrection. Having undertaken parachute training at Sandhurst — and volunteered for secondment — he was called for service with the Parachute Regiment in 1955.
Aside from attending the Staff College, Camberley, he alternated regimental and staff appointments in the airborne forces, at that time comprising two brigades, one regular and one Territorial Army, for some 14 years. He saw further active service in Cyprus, as Intelligence Officer of 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment during the EOKA terrorist campaign and in the 1956 Suez operation. He went to Jordan during the emergency deployment of 16 Parachute Brigade to block the main approach road from Iraq, after the assassination of King Faisal II by Baath Party extremists in July 1958.
As a company commander with 2nd Battalion in the mid-1960s he served in Bahrain, the Trucial States and in Aden and the Western Protectorate during operations to counter the violence fostered by the National Liberation Front and the Front for the Liberation of South Yemen. After two years with Military Operations in the MoD he was appointed to command 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment in March 1969. That August the British Army was deployed in Londonderry and Belfast.
His early experience in Northern Ireland was during an emergency tour of duty in Belfast in 1970; then he took his battalion back for an 18-month stint as Province Reserve, based near Belfast. His main task was to reinforce any unit facing excessive pressure anywhere in the Province. He was twice sent with his battalion to Londonderry, so he knew the city and the circumstances well. This unit was to be involved in “Bloody Sunday” six months after he had given up command.
With his former experience of counter-terrorist operations, Gray’s instructions on opening fire were specific. His men were to shoot only if shot at and only if a man with a weapon was identified. There were ten ranges in Palace Barracks and every man fired not less than ten rounds a day at a variety of practice targets. This was a hard but very professional battalion commanded by as experienced a CO as the Army had at the time. He had confidence in the Belfast brigade commander, Brigadier Frank Kitson, as the latter had in him — and in the GOC, Major-General Anthony Farrar-Hockley.
He was appointed OBE after his battalion command and went to the Staff College as a member of the Directing Staff. Two years later he was posted to the British Army of the Rhine as Chief of Staff of the 1st Division. In the Cold War the principal threat to the Central Region sector of the 1st (British) Corps was an armoured onslaught over the open ground facing the 1st Division. This was forecast as predominantly a tank battle, and the divisional commander, immersed in armoured tactics, awaited the arrival of his new parachutist chief of staff with interest. It proved a sound partnership, and Gray never looked back.
He attended the Royal College of Defence Studies as a colonel in 1976 before returning to 16 Parachute Brigade as commander. He saw through the conversion of this veteran formation to become the 5th Field Force, as part of the late 1970s Defence Review, and then went to Washington as Head of British Army Staff and Military Attaché in 1979.
The US Defence establishment had come to expect the British MA to be unusual and highly professional. Gray was both and it was a measure of his success that, for the final half year of his tour of duty, he took on the additional responsibilities of Head of Defence Staff and Defence Attaché in the acting rank of major-general.
On return to England in 1981 he was appointed to command South West District, which carried the additional responsibility of commander of the United Kingdom Mobile Force. This was assigned for the reinforcement of the Nato flanks in war, or to the Central Region. The programme of contingency planning and exercises was intense, and Gray’s ebullient personality did much to ease relations with host countries, some of which were less enthusiastic about having British troops trampling over them in peacetime, however much they might welcome them in war.
From February 1984 he was Chief of Staff HQ British Army of the Rhine until promoted to lieutenant-general to take over the 3-star post of GOC South East District housing the largest number of troops in the UK. The post also provided the ground force element of the Joint Force Headquarters, introduced after the Falklands War, to which his previous service made him well suited.
He left the Army aged 55 in 1988 and threw himself into many projects, of which probably the most ambitious was the preparation of the airborne forces’ part in the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings in 1944. For this service France appointed him an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1994.
He was chief executive of Rainford Developments 1990-94, Colonel-Commandant of the Parachute Regiment 1990-93, Lieutenant of the Tower of London as well as a patron, chairman or associate of more than 30 charitable organisations. The strain of this huge voluntary workload was exacerbated by recurrent trouble with a leg damaged in a parachuting accident in his mid-thirties. When this necessitated the shortening of the leg, he insisted on a further operation to restore it but he became increasingly lame. Despite this and heart problems, he maintained a strenuous working schedule.
He married Juliette Noon of Northampton in 1958. She survives him with two sons and a daughter.
Lieutenant-General Sir Michael Gray, KCB, OBE, was born on May 3, 1932. He died on March 13, 2011, aged 78
'Бій відлунав. Жовто-сині знамена затріпотіли на станції знов'
